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domain that ranked 4 has now disappeared from search results

I have a website for a realestate property, it use to rank 4 but has now suddenly disappeared from search results altogether, a search for the domain 1boydstreetalbertpark.com will bring it up (so I assume it has not been blacklisted), but if I search for '1 boyd street albert park' (it use to come up at 4) it doesn't seem to come up at all anymore.

I know the content is not original and it is the same on other sites (it is the same content the real estate agents send to everyone) but why it suddenly disappear and I would of thought having the actual search term in the domain would help it at least appear in the results.

3 Responses

Man, I'm really sorry to hear about the drop. I took a quick look but I'm gonna answer given what you said first.

If the content really is duplicated, that's going to be the first and loudest bell for me. The other domains that ranked are of higher authority (they have an established history, more quality links, etc.). Given the opportunity to rank a site of such high authority (which in turn offers several listing to clients, thus enhancing their browsing experience) vs. yours it's going to be tough to change their mind.

Food for thought:

The fact that the domain is so closely matched to the address could potentially look spammy. Pair that up with the duplicate content and it could appear rather nefarious to the Goog. I don't think it's that bad, but keep that in your noggin for future reference.

A long time ago the real estate industry felt a slap by Google for shotty link practices. I got a ton of real estate work back then (cleaning stuff up mostly). We often played with the idea to create mini sites for each property but simply didn't think it was the best way or working their online marketing. Large risks were among the hurdles.

Fast forward a few years and there's so much one can do to gain local exposure. That arena is really built for sites like those that are out-ranking yours (sites that have many listings, sort features, etc.). There are so many things you can do to promote individual properties on a single site that it's generally your best route.

Not knowing your business model, that's my first suggestion. Have a single site and promote the listings that way.

But if this is where you're at, then it may be as simple as getting some unique content on the site. You might read some advice to "make sure it is XX% different" but I would say scrap and write something truly unique. If it's in your budget, you can find freelance writers all over the place on the web that will get some decent content on there for you.

If you do a search for the one block of text that is on your page, in quotes, I get 16 results. (I'm assuming that the text is the mls info?) What is interesting though is that your site is not one of those results, even when I click on "see similar results".

My guess is that Google sees that the entire site is a duplication and as such has severely penalized it. Try changing the wording up so that it is original and see what that does.

I run a real estate site as well, and for our own listings I will always make a completely original page so that we stand above the crowd full of duplicate mls info. The other thing that I have found is that building one or two links to the page using the address as anchor text is often enough to skyrocket us to the number one position.

EDITED to add:

I should add that for our sites we do not do individual pages like you have done. The only benefit to this as I see it is to show your client that they have their own website. Rather, what I would do is to create a page on my website such as www.mysite.com/1boydstreetalbertpark and I can redirect 1boydstreetalbertpark.com to that page. This accomplishes a few things:

-you have the power and trust of your existing domain to back you up

-if potential buyers end up on your site but don't like that property, they may end up looking at your other listings, or your about us page

-if links get built to the page then it benefits your domain. For example, we had one client who was so excited to see the fantastic photos of her house on our site that she shared our page with thousands of facebook friends and VOILA, we had a huge influx of visits from potential clients. In this case it wasn't a link, but a facebook share, but it certainly could have been a link.

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